David Eberhardthttp://www.davideberhardt.com/wp
One note at a time.Sun, 03 Feb 2019 02:18:46 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9The Power of Illogical Attachmenthttp://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=297
http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=297#commentsSun, 03 Feb 2019 02:18:46 +0000http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=297I have to admit that I’m a sentimental guy.

I have strong attachments to inanimate objects, because they evoke powerful associations and memories. A silly and simple example of this is that I have a hard time getting rid of old shirts. I associate them with positive memories, and they are hard to discard. Strangely, pants are not as dear.

Music gear is significant in this regard. Once I have poured a certain amount of my soul out through a guitar, pedal, amplifier, microphone, etc, it starts to feel like a piece of me.

Today I sold and shipped my old Line 6 DL-4 Delay Modeler pedal. There’s nothing rare or special about this gadget. I bought it in late 1999, and we have done a lot together since then.

I believe they are still being made, and if not, then they are still in plentiful supply at most music gear retailers. And all of the sounds that the DL-4 makes can also be found within other Line 6 products.

I have strong memories of it…

*…Being in a loft-type bedroom in a friend’s house, that we had converted into a recording space, while he was touring in Europe. I had TWO DL-4′s chained together, and was recording atmospheric guitar parts for Katie Reider’s second studio album, I Am Ready. I remember getting the sounds dialed-in to my amplifiers, and as I was preparing to record, Katie began running up and down the stairs, bringing more and more candles into the room. Then she lighted them all, and I recorded spacey ambience, alone in candlelight, while she and everyone else listened from downstairs.

* …Writing a guitar-arrangement for a song that got played frequently at Crossroads church, in the early days, and figuring out a way that I could slide these interesting echoes up the guitar-neck, and quickly disengage the pedal. The echoes would continue while I played the next part of the song, and everyone marveled at where these multiple sounds were coming from.

* …Taking the DL-4 apart on my family room floor, while my three-year-old son played nearby. One of the footswitches had unscrewed itself and fallen into the enclosure. I had to fish it back out and secure it.

Anyway, it has been quite some time since I had a use for it. I have had all those sounds in other units for a while (an M9, and now an HX FX). The DL-4 has literally been sitting on a shelf gathering dust for a few years. Maybe two years ago, I spent the money to have it upgraded and modified. Then I promptly did nothing with it.

Today it is en route to a buyer in Arizona, and while all those sounds a re available here, there and everywhere, I can’t help but feel like I sold a significant piece of myself.

Goodbye, old inanimate not-even-an-instrument friend.

Have you ever become illogically attached to a piece of equipment? What was it? Did you get rid of it? How did you feel afterward?

File this under reviews, with the caveat that when it comes to studio engineering, I consider myself something of a promising knave in a world of wizards.

I’ve been quietly and modestly building my own small project studio since the late nineties. At some point, my goal was to operate as a bottom-feeder, serving the penniless musicians who couldn’t pay for real studio time.

But, as a guy attempting to operate a bottom-feeder recording operation, I was always unhappy. I may have looked like this.

Meet Blobfish, a real bottom-feeder. Yes, Blobfish is real.

Finally, I got tired of being broke, and changed my approach to center around the things that I do (vocals, guitar, pedestrian bass, even simpler keys). Now I’m happier, though perhaps no less blobby.

Anyway, one of my main headaches has always been mix-quality. I always feel like my recordings come out as mush.

I’ve gotten better at this, particularly in the last year or so. It’s all about subtraction. Remove the unnecessary, make room for highlighted, etc.

Hear my hearty cry! On we sled, away from mush!

We have now reached the age in which there are no limitations to recording, except environment. Aside from a good-sounding space (the importance of this cannot be overstated), all you need is a good microphone, a decent preamp, a decent interface and a computer. All of these can be purchased and made operational in a day.

I thought I would share a couple of tools that have really improved my recordings.

Greg Wells MixCentric, from Waves: This is a magic plugin to drop on the main mix bus. It does some EQ, multi-band compression, and overall compression. In short, it just “makes the mix come alive,” though it can be a little bright. It’s a great addition to vintage-style warm recordings that could use a little shimmer.

Greg Wells “MixCentric” by Waves

Greg Wells ToneCentric from Waves: This is a totally different magic plugin. It increased low-end girth and clarity (this would seem mutually exclusive, I realize), making the middle of one’s mix more authoritative. It’s hard to notice at first. Then you bypass it, and all the guts fall out of your mix, and you wonder how that ever sounded good.

Greg Wells “ToneCentric” by Waves

[NOTE: There is a Greg Wells Plugin Bundle from Waves which includes the MixCentric and ToneCentric plugins, as well as a VoiceCentric (nice tool for vocal tracks) and PianoCentric (great on keys). I think it's pretty cheap now. As of this writ, the bundle is $99 from Sweetwater, and the four plugins purchased individually add up to a lot more than that.]

Avid Eleven Rack Amplifier Simulator: I bought this in early March of 2018, because it was cheap, and I thought I’d risk it. I have not touched my old POD Pro 2.0 (which I had used for a couple of years, almost without exception, up to that point). I have not recorded through an amplifier either. In fact, I am probably going to sell the POD, all but two of my amps, and my Leslie (Vibratone) cabinet. “Nuff said.

The Eleven Rack, by Avid, has been my only source of recorded amplifier tones from March 2018 to the time of this blog publication.

This is not related to recording, but I thought I would share it as a live acoustic guitar solution…

The TC Electronic BodyRez Acoustic Guitar Pedal: This little box apologizes for piezo pickups in wonderful ways. Andy, my partner in our acoustic duo (The Mood Rings) got one too. I discovered that DI recordings of piezo pickups can be greatly improved by multiband compressors. I think the BodyRez is just doing that with a few tone-shaping options. Great little affordable tool for live work.

The BodyRez pedal by TC Electronic – redeems piezo pickups. I would highly recommend that a guitar manufacturer make a deal with TC Electronic ASAP, to put this circuit into their onboard preamp.

Have you landed on any great new solutions? What about old solutions? Any solutions you’re looking to find or improve? What about recommendations? I’d love to hear about ‘em. Let me hear!

As I started recording the guitars for Wonder, it became apparent that I was going to have to work pretty hard to get sounds worthy of sharing with the world.

My studio space was a cinder block 6′x11′ coal room with a low ceiling (6½’?). I hot-glued egg cartons and foam all over the walls and ceilings to try to tame the sound, but it was still pretty bad. My twin daughters were just over a year old, so making loud noises in the basement was only allowable in short bursts. I often re-recorded parts multiple times, once I heard what horrible sounds I had captured.

Back then, I had no real studio gear; just a tape machine, a small Mackie mixer, and a couple of microphones my band used when we performed live. I didn’t even have speakers yet, to listen to my recordings! So I just patched my mixer into the auxiliary inputs of a portable stereo I had gotten on my 16th or 17th birthday. That was my “studio.”

This is the very 1202 I used.

So I dug in. If I was recording a single-note passage, I would try to use a big round tone, and get a roomy sound. If I was playing chords, I would get the microphones closer, and try to catch more articulation. It was mostly mad science or shamanism; lots of trial and error, wishes for good fortune, and frequent disappointments.

How could I decide what to play? Perhaps fortuitously, my car stereo was broken, and all I could listen to was the radio. Based on what I was hearing, I felt that too many female artists kept their guitarists on pretty short leashes. In the name of keeping the vocal out in the forefront, their music seemed forgettable. Why listen to the singer, if the music is forgettable? So I mentally made a graph that looked like this:

SAFE <——– | ——–> WEIRD

I figured that if I landed in the exact middle that was one step too close to “safe.” So I tried to add something to each song that would add a little more weirdness.

I remember that I wanted to steer attention away from the repetitive, basic chords of “Piece Of Soul,” so I composed a melody that moved dramatically like an old church hymn (at least that’s the idea that drove it). So I reached for my Ebow to play the passage, and that became the hook.

Keep in mind, no one had any expectations for Wonder. We were all doing a favor for a young girl we knew in different degrees. Katie and I had met, but she was the little sister of a guy with whom I was casual friends. No one was spending any real money on studios, or talking about production. They handed me a tape with some blank tracks and gave me carte blanche. I don’t claim that all my ideas were good, or that we made a tremendous record, or that I somehow “saved” it… but something definitely clicked in to place, and people connected with it.

My work on the album concluded shortly after Halloween, and November became a blur of activity. The tapes were handed off, the songs were mixed hastily and mastered a few days after my final recording. The first sonic draft of the album was a mess. It was distorted. So they re-mastered it.

We musicians all gathered in a photography studio in downtown Cincinnati for a photo shoot, and posed like rock stars. I had a flannel shirt and a goatee. We looked like this.

The print material was sent off to be made, and the first visual draft was a mess. Instead of a high-contrast black & white image, Katie was gray. So they had it reprinted. I kept my gray copy. I imagine it’s pretty rare.

Good thing we hurried. Right?

A CD-release party / concert was planned for mid-December, at York Street Café in Newport, KY. I had played there quite a bit with my other band, so I was glad to be on familiar turf.

This is the York St. Café. It used to be red. I’m not sure if it’s faded or just painted pink. Those second-floor windows behind the tree are the back of the stage.

A blizzard hit. We performed anyway. There was a surprisingly large crowd. Regardless, it didn’t feel like a big enough event, so we planned another CD-release for a week or two later. Another blizzard hit. Once again, we performed anyway; and once again, there was a surprisingly large crowd. And once again, it seemed like we needed one more chance to get it right. So we performed a THIRD CD-release in early January 1999.

Within weeks, we were winning awards, and being praised in the press. Other guitarists were trying to copy my gear and talk Katie into letting them replace me. People were pulling me aside to let me know how much they noticed how my guitar brought her songs to life. I felt like my life’s ambitions were finally coming together. The CD was selling out everywhere we put it, and my middle-school aged guitar students thought I was a celebrity. I was now in one of the top acts in town. In 1999, we won multiple entertainment awards, performed at the prestigious Aronoff Center, had our work featured on Dawson’s Creek, and were on the radio pretty often. I had arrived.

All of this, as I have clearly described, happened with very humble beginnings; basement recordings, “consumer-level” equipment, and low expectations. I’m not calling this anything like a recipe for success (in fact, mostly I insist on the opposite approach), but I can’t deny that something special happened. At the very least, I developed a style of playing guitar that set a standard for ambient-organic pop music in the area. I got to take that into the modern church arena, and it seems like some variation of that has now spread worldwide (you’re welcome, and/or I’m sorry).

Perhaps the saddest part about Wonder is that its original tapes were destroyed. ADAT tapes back then were about $10 each, and it took three 8-track tapes to make a 24-track recording. So usually, one would spend $100 on a ten-pack of ADAT tapes, and call that a normal production cost (compared to old reel-to-reel tapes, this was very inexpensive).

There was some dispute about media cost, and before I knew about it, one of the producers chose to erase the tapes and recycle them to use on some other project. I was speechless. I would have gladly paid $100 to keep those tapes around. I sure wish I could hear those original recordings again, correct some errors, re-mix and re-master the album.

Wishing doesn’t change much. But gratitude helps remind me of the best parts.

Every Spring, I’m reminded of having recorded a couple of songs for Wonder, meeting everyone downtown for Taste of Cincinnati, and playing together for the first time. I’m grateful to have gotten in on the ground floor, and to have seen it through to its end.

Every Summer, I’m reminded of our live performances at places like York St Café in Newport, KY, where the room was so packed that no one could move; where people would pay each other $20 to get a spot in front of the stage; where the heat and humidity caused water to run down the walls, and I would get a Mickey Mouse shaped sweat-print on my shirt. I’m grateful to have played for ravenous attentive crowds.

Every Autumn, I am reminded of that exciting time when a young Dave was desperately hoping to make a good impression on a larger music world with the recording of Wonder. I’m proud of the minor-league success it achieved, and grateful for the odd circumstances by which it came to me.

Every Winter, as we slide into December, I’m reminded of the excitement of traveling to New York as a seasoned band at the peak of our powers and the height of our camaraderie. I’m grateful for the deep love and friendship, and the beautiful music.

And so, twenty years after Wonder, and ten years after Katie’s passing, I’m grateful for all of it.

]]>http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?feed=rss2&p=280020 Years of Wonder (Part 1)http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=272
http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=272#commentsMon, 15 Oct 2018 04:27:04 +0000http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=272Here’s what I remember… or what I think I remember.

In the Spring of 1998, I agreed to record guitar tracks for Katie Reider’s budding new album, “Wonder.” I was given maybe three songs to work on, and turned those out in about a week, casually, around my work schedule.

Summer happened, and no more progress was made on the record. I waited, but there was no deadline that I knew of, no money being talked about (I had agreed to record it as a favor), and so I didn’t press. In the meantime, I had named my little dank studio space, “The Coal Room,” and printed out track sheets to document my progress on assorted projects. I kept these in manila envelopes next to their respective studio tapes. That was how studios worked in the late 90′s, friends.

What of the 90′s studio technology? Well, I had an Alesis ADAT tape machine. It recorded 8 tracks of digital audio onto a Super VHS cassette. Yes, really. And they were modular, so you could link multiple machines together.

As was common practice with such gear, I was given a tape with a reduction mix of Katie’s scratch guitar & vocal, along with Josh’s drums. I had seven remaining tracks, so I put ideas onto each one. I made a point to put one stereo guitar-part (two tracks) on each song. I deliberately got slightly weirder than seemed appropriate, and I figured they would use what they liked, and dump the rest. They kept almost everything.

The MIDDLE of October arrived. Frantic, my old friends Josh and Tyler called me in a tizzy, desperate to see if I could hastily bang-out the remainder of an album’s worth of original guitar music in a few days. I agreed. They were mixing the first three songs when they handed the next tape over to me.

Three or four of the next songs were on that ADAT tape. I recorded those as they mixed the first three. Then I met Tyler in my employer’s parking lot one afternoon, and handed him the tape I had finished the previous night. He handed me the next one to start on. I think he was awake for three or four straight days. I imagine this was what he felt like.

I finished the next two or three songs that night and perhaps the next day. It must have been a Saturday. Or maybe I took a day off or something. Anyway, they were literally mixing songs 4,5 & 6 while I was recording 7,8 & (Row) 9.

I remember Annette calling to me that it was time to take my little twin daughters out for their first Halloween Trick-Or-Treat. I was wrestling my way through one of the songs. I think it was “Show Your Love.” That would make sense, if it was one of the last ones.

At the time, I had no idea that I was going to end up in the band, nor did I know if the band was going to have a name. Assuming no one would ever see or care what these sheets said, I made up funny (to me) names for th band on each song.

I found the old track sheets a few years ago, in a stack of old music paperwork, and scanned them in. If you’re interested, you can take a look at what I was calling those parts as I was thinking them up.

If this sort of thing interests you, feel free to ask me what any of this stuff means.

It occurs to me that these track sheets are in perfect time sequence to all be on a single tape. I wonder (pun intended) if they gave the tape back to me to work on. Maybe they added more stuff to it between Spring and October.

In any case…

Conspicuously absent are the track sheets for “Show Your Love” and “Shaken” (maybe I handed them off along with the tape, for the mixing process). Those were both difficult songs. I wanted to use a wah pedal on “Show Your Love,” but mine was broken, no one I knew had one to lend, and there weren’t any stores around for me to get one quickly. So I used an envelope filter, which does something similar, but automatically.

I didn’t like it, and ended up changing how I played the song live. Much of my challenge was to keep the song from sounding like “Sweet Home Alabama.”

“Shaken” stumped me. I didn’t know Katie at all, and so I sent her a very hesitant and polite inquiry, asking if she could tell me about the feelings behind the song. I didn’t want to pry into anything too personal, but I had no musical ideas (which is unusual for me). She responded quite graciously by saying that she had been left feeling “sour” in the wake of a failed relationship. I really seized onto that word: SOUR. And so I becan constructing the arrangement of “Shaken” with lots of dissonance and tension and chaos.

I remember that I discovered a really cool tone by putting a microphone on the BACK on this old amplifier I had (which has now been broken since 2004). I recorded a bunch of parts for “Shaken” with that sound, and when I was finished, they all jumbled together into this sonic mess. The clock was ticking, and I couldn’t re-record. So I used my SansAmp pedal, and bounced some of the guitar-tracks through it, and re-recorded that changed tone. It worked!

In 2002ish, I was in a band called Gwendolyn Speaks, with some friends who were superb musicians and singers. We were booked to play the Columbus Arts Festival that summer.

Festival performances are a mixed bag. Organizers want live music all day long, but most people are only interested in seeing live music starting approximately at sunset, when the stage lights are on, and the alcohol is starting to flow. As the bigger names get the later slots, this means that you have to be pretty well known to play an evening set. Otherwise, your crowd looks like this:

Woot!

Well, Gwendolyn Speaks was not a big name in Cincinnati, much less in Columbus, so our set time was something like 1pm on a Sunday. Predictably, the area in front of the stage was pretty empty. There was a steady stream of, say, moms with kids, who would stroll by, listen for a few minutes, and then move on. But there were two guys who “looked like musicians,” sitting and watching our set. One was in black jeans, a black sleeveless shirt and black skullcap. The other had a Hawaiian shirt and very tall hair. I figured maybe they were playing on the same stage later.

On that same date, there was a guitar show scheduled on the opposite side of Columbus (these happen twice a year). Now, knowing that not many people were going to be present at our show, I was mostly hoping to finish the set and leave quickly, so I could find a cool bargain at that show.

It was also at this time that I was using a pretty complicated rig, though I may have been actively simplifyng it. In any case, I was almost certainly using two UK-made Vox AC15 amplifiers, running in stereo.

[Two things: (1.) I believe I may have been a front-runner in the Cincinnati area for using AC15's. They weren't being used by many people. Then I got mine, and suddenly everyone started getting them. (2.) Yes, I know these aren't AC15's. ]

At the conclusion of our set, I went straight to work, tearing-down my gear, and loading it out to my car, which was conveniently parked right near the stage. As I was heading back to the stage for another armload of gear, our bassist said something like “Billy Bob Thornton is over there, and he wants to meet you.” I laughed, because, come to think of it, the guy in black DID look a lot like BBT. It was a good joke from Pete the Bassist, who was usually clever and understated like that. So I walked up to the stage front to meet the guy.

It was actually Billy Bob Thornton. The actor. The real guy.

I shook his hand and said hello. He had a tattoo on his right bicep that said “Angelina.” As you may remember, he and Angelina Jolie were married there for a bit. This meeting was like a month before they split up.

Anyway, turns ut that BBT is a musician (a drummer – make your own jokes), and he and his band were actually performing later, though on a different stage.

If you were a man, it was easy to watch a Gwendolyn Speaks set, because our two lady singers, Tara and Carrie, were quite lovely. And Pete and Scott and I were all music geeks, so we tended to infuse the catchy pop songs with some nice flourishes.

So, not surprisingly, BBT loved the show, and he and his guitarist (Hawaiian shirt guy) said they loved my tone and playing, and wanted to ask some questions about what I used. So, long before there were YouTube videos and guitar sites devoted to this sort of thing, I gave a “Rig Rundown” to Billy Bob Thornton and his guitarist.[Note the amplifiers behind these guys]

After a pleasant chat, we all went our separate ways. I headed off to the guitar show, where nothing memorable happened. For the remainder of the day, several of us just called each other and screamed into the phone; “Aaaagh! Billy Bob Thornton! Aaaagh!

“Aaaagh!”

This was back when cell phones did NOT come with cameras. So of course no one took pictures. Who takes pictures at a Sunday afternoon gig? Well, the next day, I stopped at a gas station and bought a disposable camera to keep in the car, just in case. For you youngsters, a disposable camera cost a few dollars. You would take a bunch of pictures with it, then take the whole camera in to a place (say, a pharmacy or grocery store) to get the pictures developed. They would discard or recycle the camera, and you would get your pictures. I am surprised to learn that they are still around.

Also at this time, my wife had a tendency to steal whatever camera I owned, take photos with it, use up all the film, and then lose/ruin/misplace the camera. So a disposable camera seemed like a great idea for me. I kept one in my car until she found it, stole it, took a bunch of photos, and left me with no camera. This happened several times.

Thus, despite my best efforts, here’s another “big fish” story:

A year or two later I would find myself on stage with The Pointer Sisters.

In early March of 2018, I bought an Avid Eleven Rack for my studio. I had been using my POD Pro 2.0 for quite some time, with results that fell mostly into the “I suppose that is OK” category, and I spent a lot of time processing tracks (EQ, etc) to get them there.

I was headed into ankle-reconstruction surgery, and wanted something to inspire me back into music creation while I recovered (experimenting with new gear always helps). Yes, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to walk for a long time, but I was unprepared for how much NOT sitting upright I would be able to do (had to keep my foot elevated). I’ve done far less recording than I had planned to do this year, but I HAVE done some, and solely with the Eleven Rack (henceforth “11R” for brevity).

The good news is that this has been a fantastic experience.

The first evidence I’d like to share is three songs I recorded for my friend Todd Gilbert in the Flint, Michigan area, for an album of covers. This seemed like a perfect test for the 11R- sending the product off to a collaborator., and comparing them to known, published works.

The three songs I recorded were Huey Lewis’ “Bad Is Bad,” Billy Joel’s “Laura,” and Hall & Oates’ “Out Of Touch.”

“Bad Is Bad” was the first one I recorded. The original recording is an 80′s nod to a 50′s vibe, and the production (while pleasantly nostalgic) does not stand up well. So I built the whole thing around a swaggering Telecaster riff. The 11R transmitted my sound with both girth and clarity- clarity I always found lacking in the POD Pro. Through the whole song I recorded a lot of solo ad-libs on an old Electra Invicta, allowing Todd to pick and choose which of these he wanted to keep. Then, I recorded my Jazzmaster throught a Leslie patch I either found or edited-together on the 11R. It sounded as good as (if not better than) most good Leslie simulations I have heard. Finally, I played a slide solo with the Telecaster. Usually I reach for my old Marshall JCM800 combo for this task, but the 11R did the job exceptionally well.

“Laura” is a pretty close approximation of the original arrangement. I’m not sure what was really used on the recording of the original solo to give it that sound… but I just double-tracked it. All those electric guitar licks are my Telecaster. Since Billy Joel was clearly channeling The Beatles, I donned my George Harrison cap, and played the chord-changes with an electric 12-string (a mid-2000′s Fender Stratocaster XII). All of this was done with the 11R, straight in to my interface, with one exception- there is a swirly modulation phrase at the end of the solo, where I ran out of the 11R through my old Quadraverb.

Finally, “Out Of Touch” came across my desk. Todd had envisioned a straight-ahead rocker, so I played an 8th-note chugging rhythm on the Invicta, and then added a double-tracked arrangement of the Telecaster playing some Alex Lifeson type arpeggios and minor 7 stabs. I dialed-in an obvious Van Halen inspired patch for the solo (complete with phaser) and recorded that on the Invicta, as well as a double-tracked slide part (without phaser). Then to give it all some more growl, I added a fuzz track from my Jazzmaster.

The bad news is that I might not need all these amplifiers anymore.

Summary:

The 11R is a great comprehensive tool for guitarists in a studio setting. you can choose from a variety of classic amplifiers and speaker cabinets, a decent array of effects pedals, and even a small but respectable batch of standard top-shelf studio microphones. Each piece of the signal chain distinctively interacts with the next, and then responds accordingly. Once you understand the editing navigation, it is easy to bounce through settings and dial in a tone. It’s not the sort of thing I would use live (ask me again in a few years), so I cannot speak to that application.

I found it a little noisy, to my surprise. This may have something to do with how it’s connected to my rack, but then my POD Pro is comparably dead silent. To be fair, the noise is no more than the line noise of an old amplifier, but this may affect certain quiet passages of recordings. I was able to filter it out well enough with some standard DAW plugins.

Now that the 11R price has dropped to $299, it’s a safe and sensible investment. ProTools users can use it as a virtual instrument, record guitar tracks direct, and process them through the 11R afterward. I use Reaper, and I suppose there’s a way to do this, but it isn’t really how I like to work.

It has quickly become an easy go-to choice for me. I’m pleased with the purchase, nearly six months later, as well as with the end results of the handful of recordings it’s been featured on. Would definitely recommend it. Calling this one a strong 8/10, with the only complaints being noise (admittedly could be due to ignorance), and an interface that required reading the manual to be able to operate.

]]>http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?feed=rss2&p=2612Rejuvenationhttp://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=258
http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=258#commentsMon, 30 Jul 2018 03:32:49 +0000http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=258My family has had a small cabin in Mountainhome, Pennsylvania (in the Poconos) for decades. It may be my favorite place on Earth.

Last week at this time, I was preparing to return home from there, During the last day or two, the rain decided to assert its dominance. On the cabin porch, surrounded by mountain rain in the trees, and with a rushing creek 100 feet away, I started working on a chord-melody version of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now.”

It sounded like this:

Time in the woods, breathing clean air, and not having to deal with the assorted nonsense of city life reminded me of two very important things:

(1.) I definitely need to take more time off. I don’t mean the lazy disengaged sloth that passes for breaks. I mean regular planned breaks from routine. Nature, preferably, should be involved.

(2.) If I’m not ACTIVELY creative, I’m like a plant withering from lack of water or sunlight. Sadly, my job, which used to be actively creative (I was a music director) is now merely passively creative. I lead the creative process of other people who ARE actively creative.

If I was older, bald, and surrounded by the most diverse-imaginable team, my time at work might look like this:

So there’s this illusion that since I’m “working creatively,” I’m creating. Not really. It’s a fine point, but any artist who’s ever been promoted out of actively creating knows that there’s no substitute for making your own things.

Reflecting back on June and July, there’s some sense of creative accomplishment. I finally recorded Led Zeppelin’s “Ten Years Gone” in memory of my friend Katie (though I have always wanted to play it). I recorded guitar and background vocal tracks for my friend Todd Gilbert’s new album “Guiding Light” (dropping July 31). And The Mood Rings (my acoustic duo) continues to play cover songs in local watering holes.

But the most profound moment for me was when my fingers, on the fretboard of that guitar, started working out the melody and accompaniment of “I Can See Clearly Now.” Suddenly, while showering, or driving through the Pennsylvania and Ohio countrysides, the little poet who lives in my brain started calling out lyric ideas. He’s been quiet for a while. Rest and reflection seems to have woken him up. He’s downright chattery now.

Five years ago, before taking that music director job, I was deeply enmeshed in working on acoustic chord melody arrangements. I was also writing and recording a solo album. These things are innate and important to who I am. Every day, I yearn to be creating music while I’m enmeshed in the blah-blah-blah (which disguises itself as important creative processes). I wilt a little more, and just let it slide along. Clearly, the disciplines of active rest and active creativity are important.

I don’t have an answer to the dilemma today, other than to make the time to do the stuff. All I can tell you is that I’m driven to do the stuff… ACTIVELY.

What do you do to rejuvenate? Do you need creative rejuvenation? If so, What do you do to get that?

]]>http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?feed=rss2&p=2580Ten Years Gonehttp://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=245
http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=245#commentsFri, 13 Jul 2018 04:44:43 +0000http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=245Twenty years and a few months ago, some friends of mine asked if I might record some guitar tracks for a young girl named Katie Reider. She had about an album’s worth of material, and with their help, they gotten it to where it was a few electric guitars away from sounding like a real record. Well, I added those very guitars, and that record ended up being called Wonder.

In just a few actual evenings (which were spread-out over the course of several months), I managed to record eight of Wonder’s ten songs. I never expected anything to happen with it, really. I thought, maybe, in a year or so, she might have sold enough CD’s that, if all went well, I might get $100.

The album was a local smash. We won a bunch of awards, we were on the radio, and in the papers. My guitar students thought I was famous. Overnight, I became the guitarist in one of the most popular bands in town. I had arrived.

There were highs and lows, but in fairly short order, I was the only original band member. Katie and I had no choice. We became the best of friends, confidants, and musical partners. The next couple of years were great. In 2006 everything suddenly caught fire. I was convinced we were just a few yards from the proverbial touchdown. Then she got a toothache.

Only, it wasn’t a toothache.

It was a horrible monster, and it destroyed my friend.

My first gig with Katie was at Taste Of Cincinnati in 1998. My last gig with Katie was at Taste Of Cincinnati in 2007. The next year, she was gone. That was July 14, 2008; ten years ago. This was how she looked at our last show together.

When 2018 started, I was aware that the ten year echo of her passing was coming. Led Zeppelin’s “Ten Years Gone” has always been one of my favorite songs, and I thought it would be a fitting tribute. Robert Plant wrote it about an old girlfriend, so it doesn’t quite fit, but the music captures the feelings, I think, of a yearning for a time in the past with someone dear. Also, no one knows this (until now). When I was recording Wonder, I felt a tremendous pressure to accomplish something special. When in doubt, I would ask myself, “WWJPD” (What Would Jimmy Page Do)?

“Ten Years Gone”is a fantastic anthem. One of my favorite discoveries about it, once I dissected the guitar parts, is that, apparently, I record layered guitars rather a lot like Jimmy Page did on this song.

Fitting, right?

Anyway, I know Katie would love it, because she loved the music I made. This is for Katie. But also for me.

]]>http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?feed=rss2&p=2450Ankles, Aikido, and Amplificationhttp://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=240
http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=240#commentsTue, 29 May 2018 16:17:15 +0000http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=240So I had this lingering sore foot/ankle/leg thing…
On March 9, a doctor cut into my ankle to repair what had turned out to be a pretty major injury. I spent a month (March-April) with no weight on my left foot, then started hobbling a bit. I’m now walking normally, mostly. With the help of my physical therapist (a friend since 7th grade), that ankle getting noticeably stronger and more flexible every day. All of this is good… actually it’s better than normal, and I’m grateful. I now have an awesomely gross scar to horrify the squeamish.

As a result of my ankle injury, I had become progressively less active, and not able to spend much time out and about with my family. I gained weight from being sedentary. Honestly, I gave up on taking care of myself. That has all changed. My diet is better. I’m sleeping normal hours. Last week, I even walked the dogs with my sweet little wife, twice. Life feels like “normal” is within sight.

Wait, there’s more…

One of my great loves, aside from music, is the traditional martial arts of Japan. I’ve been an eager student of Aikido since I was 21, and started Iaido back in 2004ish. After my injury (which had nothing to do with martial arts), the first thing I had to stop doing was all the lateral movement in Aikido. Iaido stopped a few months later.

This past week, I not only did some Aikido training, but I did a small demonstration of Aikido within a broader presentation at the church where I work. So not only am I physically active again, I was able to bring a thing I love into the job I do. The last time I did anything like that was back when I was still directing music there. I had to let the music role go, when I moved in to my creative “Production Director” job, last year.

Well, one of the things about musicians is that, in the summer, they want to play all these festivals. I suppose the money is good (back when I did it, the money wasn’t great, and I didn’t like the heat and hassle). Anyway, because of that, there’s a need for a substitute guitarist. So I will be subbing in on guitar in a week-and-a-half.

That’s June 9. Also on June 9, there’s a big event at the Aikido dojo. Also-also, my acoustic duo has a gig that night. I may have over-committed.

So… as it pertains to June 9, I might be going too fast. But after a year-and-a-half of slow motion, I gotta believe this is all understandable.

Have you ever been sidelined for an illness or injury, and had to wait it out? How did you cope during the interim? Have you ever been sidelined because of a role-change, and had to watch others do what you started? What was that like? Finally, have you ever overcompensated by over-committing? What safeguards did you put in place to prevent it from happening again?

Sprich, mein volk!

]]>http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?feed=rss2&p=2400The goings-on of Mayhttp://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=236
http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=236#commentsSat, 05 May 2018 16:51:22 +0000http://www.davideberhardt.com/wp/?p=236There are several creative-type things I like to do.

It may have come up in conversation that I play guitar a little.

I’m hilarious, aren’t I?

I also sing a little, write songs, record & music. I’m a decent audio engineer and editor too. Sometimes I do voice-over work, or commercial production. In the past, I have done some acting on stage and screen. I tinker, a tiny bit, with video and graphic design/presentation. I write, and I think I have two novels in me, but I’m reluctant to put any energy toward them.

So when I write, it’s usually in blog form, which takes us to this writ.

Being a classic ADHD (not so much the H part) sufferer, it’s difficult to focus on something unless I can HYPERFOCUS. Get me working on any of these creative exercises, and I can lose a whole day.

At the end of 2017, I shared a fairly large pile of recordings with the world, which I put on my website, and called“The Sincerest Form of Flattery, Vol.1” These are just cover songs I recorded for fun, to share with friends. Obviously, the name implies that there are more to come, and I truly intend to do so.

Ouch. Yeah.

Realistically, it’s May now, and I haven’t put much energy towards those new songs yet. Getting back into creative music mode in the studio has been a hard engine to start. I’ll blame ankle-surgery, but there has been a fair amount of binge-watching Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

So whilst I’ve been putzing around…

A friend of mine who lives afar had mentioned several times in the past, that it would be fun to work on a music project together. Well, he popped the question, and I accepted. So, even though this is a very busy (and tired) time, I forced myself to sit down and ride the music wave last night. The hardest part is swimming out into the proverbial ocean. So I swam, and I listened, and I thought a slide guitar might be a nice interpretation.

Two and a half hours later, I came up from the depths, to get a breath of air.

Whoa.

It’s fun to be back in the saddle, making music for someone -even if it’s just one song- again. How nice to shake some of the rust off of my modest (at best) slide guitar skills! Of course I used my Telecaster. Of course I did! Well, the intonation on it is all out of sorts, the strings are old, the volume pot is busted, and the whole damn guitar is noisy. Of course I used it anyway.

I finished a basic rhythm track (which may have been unnecessary) and a slide solo, and threw some ad-lib slide parts here and there. I will probably do some better ad-libs later. Then I get to do some studio singing, which I haven’t done in like six months.

On the periphery of all of this, I’m now performing somewhat regularly in an acoustic duo called The Mood Rings. We keep getting gigs offered to us, and having great ease booking new ones.

A few years ago, I was frantically busy with music stuff just to keep my name recognizeable, and my income steady. Now I get to do it for fun and inspiration.

I wouldn’t change a thing… except that I’d like to be performing with an electric guitar a little more.

We’ll see what the next half of the year brings.

What’s your creative outlet? Do you do it because you love it, or because it’s an obligation? If you could do something else, what would it be? Do you create because you love creating, or because you want recognition/fame/money? ‘Fess up.